aggregation bandwidth - better safe than sorry

2:34 PM
aggregation bandwidth - better safe than sorry -

Since the Internet has become a staple in the American home countless surfers have felt the sting of that dreaded word. "Disconnected" for some people this means having to wait a few hours to find their true love or check email. With the rise of the internet as a business application, however, it has come an increased importance of having a reliable internet connection.

Take, for example, a sales office. Most sales offices now rely on the internet for lead distribution, order processing, order tracking, etc. For a high-volume sales office an hour with a dead internet connection could easily set the company back ten thousand dollars. Other industries also deal with the realities of downtime - how much money could a day trader to lose not covering his short by the closing bell?

The fact of the matter is that time on the Internet is literally money for a while '. Having more of it gives them a competitive advantage and losing some of it results in serious financial losses. As obsessed as most serious business-people are with data redundancy (fact: more paper is consumed per capita in this digital age that the internet), most do not have at any time before even considering the potential benefit of having redundant access to the internet. For many far-sighted people who actually have a redundant choice, do not leverage the power of bandwidth aggregation to take advantage of the increased bandwidth.

So what is the aggregation of bandwidth? It 'a pretty simple concept, actually: simply taking two broadband internet connections (T1, cable, DSL, fiber, etc.) and their transformation into a fat connection. They could, for example, have two DSL lines aggregated. It could also aggregate two different types of broadband - for instance, you could aggregate one T1 connection with a cable connection.

The aggregation of two broadband connections offers a higher bandwidth, but not necessarily the speed. This is where many people get confused. Suppose you have a 3 Mbps DSL connection and you own a small business. This is a pretty fast connection, but you have ten employees and have noticed that in the rush hour internet slows down or, in a worst case scenario, it does not work at all for some people. By ordering another 3 Mbps DSL line you will still hit a maximum speed of 3 Mbps (note that this is a theoretical maximum that will almost never hit with ADSL), but you will now have twice the bandwidth. In other words, if five simultaneous connections were feasible before, now you will be able to have ten.

double the bandwidth (also known as your "pipe" or "stream") is a great benefit of broadband aggregation, but it's not the only benefit. When using a broadband aggregator, a router specially designed for load balancing, you will also have undergone a fail-safe in case one of your internet connections goes down. Obviously the speed will be slower when one of the connections is out (because the bandwidth will be cut in half), but at least it will still be able to perform critical office functions.

Let's assume that you operate a small company with ten employees and you have a T1 for everyday use. Your T1 is probably pretty reliable, but once or twice a year there is a glitch (like somebody kicking a cable at the ISP) and you lose, on average, two hours a year of internet access. Using a wide bandwidth aggregation router and adding a DSL line, when the T1 is out you will still be able to take orders, orders ship out, the track orders, check inventory, etc. And if the 'interruption is longer will fail around trying to find a source of backup data. Employees may complain about the slow speeds on the internet, but at least they will be able to get their work done. Also, as an added bonus, you will have more bandwidth for your employees when both internet sources are working.

The benefits of broadband aggregation greatly exceed the costs do not use it for almost any established business. Broadband aggregation offers the flexibility and reliability for small businesses who can not afford an expensive, tailored IT solution.

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